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Nestmate Transport

If you spend time watching ants, you may sometimes notice that one ant appears to be carrying the body of a second, motionless ant. The second individual isn’t dead; rather, she’s just tucked away into EZ-carry mode. What’s going on?

It’s thought ants carry each other around for two reasons. The first is that the carrying ant knows the destination, and transport is a more reliable way than, say, leading, to get the second ant to location. The second reason is that the small size of ants makes carrying a more energy efficient way to move two ants than were both walking individually.

I photographed these Myrmica in Kentucky last week while out with the graduate students at Raven Run Nature Sanctuary.

I’ve seen large-scale nest mate carrying in Formica exsectoides moving to a new nest site. I wonder if it’s the older, foraging workers who carry the younger, nurse workers, as the latter are not otherwise ready to venture from the nest?